Research Themes

The Cambridge Neuroscience Community

Interests

Given a set of environmental conditions and behavioral limitations, what is the optimal neural strategy and performance for a certain visual task? What adaptations are crucial for it? Are such adaptations widely spread across distantly related species that display similar behaviors? Or are they just present in one highly specialized group?

To answer these questions, the laboratory works on visually guided predators. Predation is innate, robust, reproducible and crucial for survival. We focus on how predatory insects code motion information about their prey (target).

We employ high speed videography (in the field and in the laboratory), electrophysiology (intracellular and extracellular) and microscopy (light and electron). In addition, we collaborate with the laboratory of Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute for Brain Science) in the development of new techniques for tracing neurons.